Friday, June 21, 2013

Meet My Babies!

Hi guys!

I was thinking last night that I'd never officially introduced the two furry loves of my life to everyone. So here they are:

On the left is my Vegas (he came with the name and it suits him!), aka Big Boy. He is our "pound puppy". My husband and one of my best friends picked him out at the local Humane Society as a surprise wedding gift for me. He was about five months old at the time, a terrified ball of fur, and is now about five. Big Boy is some sort of a shepherd mix. He has long fur and a curly tail that you can't see in this picture. Big Boy is happy, friendly, and outgoing with strange people and strange dogs. He makes a great ambassador for rescue: people always want to know what kind of dog he is and are surprised to hear that he's a mutt from the Humane Society.

He's also extremely smart and never has to be told "No!" more than once. For example: the bedroom rule. When we first got Big Boy as a puppy, we were living in a tiny townhouse near the university. About a year later, we bought our house and moved across town. He'd never been allowed into the bedroom at the townhouse and has never once set foot in our bedroom here. Big Boy sat there and watched us carry That Furniture into That Room, and figured out all on his own that he would also not be allowed in the new room.

Then there's Ellie, aka Trouble. She is our "found puppy". Unlike Big Boy, who'd been picked up as a stray and was in a shelter, Trouble was dumped by her previous owners in the dog enclosure at the park in our neighborhood about a year after we moved into our house. We originally thought she was lost and tried to find her owners, but had no luck. About a month after she came to us, I ran into a neighbor who also takes her dog to the dog park and she told me that she'd seen Trouble there super early that morning with a paper plate of dog food. The vet immediately identified her as a Boston Terrier/ Pit Bull mix. She's got some brindle in her coat (brown patches mixed in with the black) that you can't see in this shot.

In many ways, she's everything Big Boy is not: in-your-face, mischievous, out to please herself first. The rules only seem to apply if you are there to catch her, and I can almost hear her thinking "I'm sorry you feel that way" when I scold her. She's also more snuggly, a kisser, the dog that comes and puts a paw on my knee when I'm sad, and a fearless "watch dog" who stares intently out the window or through the gate when I leave. Trouble is probably the last dog on the planet that I would have picked as a companion for Big Boy. Their sizes, personalities, and temperaments are radically different. But she's been unbelievable good for him. She's taught him how to play and be a puppy. Trouble will bring out a toy and shove it into his face until he will play. She's the Scrappy to his Scooby-Doo.